Parts Guide (2019 update)

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really nice thread Dasa. I'm starting to look at components for a build, and the thread has been very useful indeed...

glad its of use

just spotted the mini mac while looking at atom configs its sure has very low idle power use at 13w and a decent amount of grunt with the 2ghz core 2 and nvidia 9400 just a shame it has no hdmi and costs over 1k with only 1g ram and 160g hdd

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Q9550 are still ok if people dont care to spend extra for ddr3 and $300+ for a 1366 motherboard.

the price difference with a $209 mb and $89 ddr2 for the q9550 build was just $195 less the the i7 you could trim that cost down a few $ with generic ram and a cheap mb but imo go a cheaper build like e8400 or phenom 2 or spend the extra on i7

i have been tempted to buy a dell led lcd to replace one of the old crt in the office that use more power turned off than this thing will on two of which are losing there brightness but i have been reading everything from great reviews to horrific ones about them

i might just grab the 22" while its $50 off even though the 24" isnt much more since the vertical res is much the same there isnt much to gain unless the panel is better quality

sapphire 4890 vaporx HD4890 Vapor-X, 870Mhz 1050Mhz toxic 960Mhz 1050Mhz is worth a look to as it seems to be much quieter than the stock cooling while beeing cooler to but then its ~$330-370 vs ~$280 still a good option for someone who wants low noise though

philo-sofa

thanks for the feedback im not as familiar with amd gear as i would like nowdays

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Suggestion for HDD's - the Seagate 7200.12's seem to be materially faster than the WD Blacks and are also significantly cheaper: $142 - $150 for the 1TB WD vs $119 - $125 for the Seagate.

There aren't all that many reviews out yet (one from Bit-Tech), however user testing seems to support their being the new top peforming 7200RPM platter drive. The 500GB and 1TB 7200.12's are based on 500GB platters.

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the larger platters give it better read speeds but bad firmware and i guess bad platter maturity gives them lower write times and bad seak times which dont mater as much for game load times as loading is just reading and seaking isnt much of a problem if the drive isnt fragmented

the blacks extra cost is partialy the extra 2 years warranty to

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Hmm. The warranty thing is a bit fail - thought Seagates had a 5 yr :/

From the above article in spite of apparent bad seek times, the drive performs well in read ops, and in write operations, however does less well in simulataneous read & write. Still have a suspicion it's on top, but does seem to bear waiting for more in depth analysis before it could be declared faster than the black.